jmporsche944

I would like to put some adjustable camber plates on my car. I had a lot of camber on the front wheels but it was eating through tires. I would like to be able to adjust it for autocross and then set it back for street driving.

What do you have to do to adjust it with camber plates? Does the front end need to be jacked up? I dont really get how they work

Are these any good?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MK1-P...mZ370052270203

I dont think I want to shell out 450 for the lindsey racing ones. Are there any other options?

Thanks guys

Darwantae951

I always thought that you just loosened the four bolts at the top and physically moved the strut according to the degree markings on the plate. Good question about jacking the car up or not tho. I don't have any real experience with these so take this with a grain of salt. I'll check back here to read the answers!

-Darwin

jmporsche944

Thanks Darwin. I would think that it would be hard to move the strut with the weight on it, but I really dont have to great of an understanding of suspension so I could be totally wrong

Airflite40

I think what you mean is you had a lot of NEGATIVE camber, and you were eating through front tires.

Those camber plates are crap, I have seen them in person, they come with no instructions and cheap hardware. If you look at good camber plates they have the degrees marked on them, these just have random cheap *** marks scribed.

If you want camber plates for cheap, find someone who is selling used ones. Also, camber plates will add ~7/8" to your front suspension, so if you don't have height adjustable front struts you will need lowering spring to retain your front ride height.

The only point of camber plates is if you track your daily driver, so you can easily switch back and forth. When the tires are warm enough and have the correct pressure, having negative camber will not eat your tires like crazy.

95ONE

I just bought it. I'll let you know.

But also, there's a new topic on here about this same part from about a month ago.

Search.

Rich Sandor

It's actually not the extra camber that eats your tires. What happens is that most people just dump in -3deg camber, but don't realise that when you add -camber, the toe automatically comes out. The extra toe is actually what eats away at the inside of your tires.

I have run -3.2deg camber for 2+ year on the street, but I zero'd out the toe. Inside wear is negligable. However I do track/autocross frequently.

Actually, that's not entirely true. No camber plate can have accurate degrees marked on them, because as you change the ride height, the translated degrees would be altered as well. Where it's etched at -3deg camber on a stock car, would actually be -3.5deg on my lowered car. Non-labelled notches are better, as they are meant to be used as reference points only.

The real determining factor of the quality of a camber plate lies in the bearing used to support the shock. What kind of bearing is it? Is there a dust cover? Does it raise the ride height? How heavy is the unit? Can you mount a strut brace on top of it?

Depends on which camber plates. The flats ones DO raise the car. The weltmeisters, dynatech, and a couple others do not. This is not an issue on an adjustable ride-height shock - although you do lose shock travel by lowering the ride height.

It's actually nothing to do with the tires being warm - it's all to do with the fact that if you have STOCK camber at autox/track, in a left turn (for example) the car will LEAN over unto the outside edge of the right tires, and you will wear the **** out of the shoulders, and not use the inside of the tire. If you add negative camber, you get more even contact patch under heavy cornering, and therefore more even wear.

Camber/Alignment determines the location of the contact patch across the tire tread.

Tire pressure determines correct wear across that contact patch.

Airflite40

gt37vgt

I have those cheap ones they seem fine to me not in yet . I'm considering mounting them above the body to get that shock travel back but i will use m10 bolts (maybe 6 of them) and stiffener plate to stop them punching though .
i believe you can a just them with the car on the ground with a big screw driver . I will put reference marks on mine with them installed.

333pg333

Some people also use Toe out for turn in, but assuming you have some track tyres you shouldn't see too much wear if you're only using them for those days, then back to your streeters. Worth spending the money on getting a 2nd set of wheels and tyres if you don't have them. It will save you money in the long run.

HansB

Rich is quite correct.

Some added notes:

Good top mount plates do make camber adjustment a lot more accurate then the OEM excenters

Top mount camber plates do have the advantage that the effect on changing camber to the toe in is limited. We tested it on my car, and adjusting the camber with 0.5 degree only changes the toe in with 0.1 degree, for each tire. Unlucky for quick street-to-track adjustment this is in the wrong direction: More negative camber is more negative toe-in, and for track use you would want a bit of positive toe-out for easier turn-in behavior.

For track use, you would more often then not want a asymmetrical camber set-up: Depending on the direction of the circuit, CW or CCW, you would get more left or right turns, and you would want the wheel that carries most of the load to have more negative camber.

333pg333

Hans, our main circuit in Sydney is 7 left and 4 right hand corners. For this I think a fairly even amount both sides is probably OK. Having said that, you could get really particular and figure out what sort of load and camber these corners are respectively and maybe adjust accordingly?

Dave951

For those looking to calculate, heres a excel spreadsheet I stumbled upon sometime ago. Loaded with chassis information..etc. Since it is probably long since lost in some thread I'll post it here.

HansB

Life is simpler than that.

You can after a run check the temperature distribution of the tires. Inside, middle and outside. This will tell you how to adjust the camber.

After a full day, you can also check the wear pattern of the tire. This also can give you information. Last time I did a track day, I had unusual thread wear on my left F tire. Turned out the camber had changed from the 3.5 degrees that are usual on that track, to 2.75.

Finally, you can trust your gut feel. Which are the hard corners, the L or the R? Like the corner you show in your avatar, would be quite a load on your L tire.

jmporsche944

Some really good information, thanks for the replys.

DAR951

Additional "added note": The amount Toe changes in relation to a Camber change, is dependent on the Caster angle. In English, if you run a lot of Caster, the amount Toe increases when Camber is increased is greater than if you run small Caster angles.